Musing about my five collecting interests: all things Orioles, 50's Baseball, team publications, Japanese cards and even some football and hockey.
You might find some beautiful women, soccer stuff, presidential pins and life advice from time to time. I don't charge extra for any of those.

Friday, December 8, 2017

A couple of unexpected things happened here in the last 36 hours or so. First of all I got a surprise (but very welcome) envelope from my friend Mike McKay of Chicago. He had picked up a box of the holiday Topps set which I have since learned come only from WalMart stores in blasters. Mike forwarded the Orioles he got in his box. Pretty much the three biggest names on the team, Chris Davis, Manny Machado and Adam Jones.

They are a pretty neat item. But if I was a team 'complete-ist' I might be annoyed with Topps adding to my needs list so late in the year. Then again I think the days of collecting every card from your team (or player) is long gone. I dunno how everyone else feels about these but I think the addition of the little snowflakes is kind of cool (pun intended).

The other thing that kind of snuck up on us down here in Houston was snow. I woke up this morning to a nice layer of the white stuff covering everything except the street in my neighborhood. As I expected Facebook is full of Houston folks screaming that it's the first time we've ever seen snow but you know how that is. It doesn't happen all that often but we've had the white stuff here every few years as long as I can remember.

Here are the other cards from the 'snow set' that Mike sent. Thanks, again, Mike!

The Adam Jones card makes it appear he's trying to catch some of the flakes with a diving effort. I wonder if that was intended.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Here's something that won't interest many (any? LOL) but it sure made me happy. The 1972 Sunoco Stamps Baltimore Colts issue was part of a semi-national gas station premium that featured 24 players from each NFL team plus an album.

The initial group of 24 Colts was easy to find in a lot on eBay, as was the album. What was much more difficult were the two 'new player' stickers which were what amounted to an update to the original group.

Back in October I found a seller who had these things. I sent him an offer for the two Colts and then the listing disappeared. But the seller contacted me and said he'd relist them for the price I offered and that was that. It was all sort of weird but in the end I picked up what amounted to a pair of minor 'white whales'.

Yes, the two new player stickers actually have 'NEW PLAYER' printed on the bottom. Here is the post from early 2015 in which I included these things as part of my Baltimore Colts Card History series. Below are a couple of the regular issue stickers.

Monday, December 4, 2017

Social media can be an awful place, but I didn't have to tell you that, did I? I have Facebook and Twitter accounts but sometimes you just have to walk away from them for a bit. At least I do. But there is some upside to them too, if you know how to filter the garbage.

For example a couple of months ago I saw posted a shot of the great Bears runningback, Gale Sayers. It reminded me that one of my hobby goals has been to pick up the Sayers rookie card out of the 1966 Philly Gum set. It's been a card I've wanted but wasn't going to overpay for. Nor was I going to buy a terrible copy just to say I had it. A couple of weeks after I started looking I found this one on eBay.

It's flawed but still very collectible. Any Philly Gum card you come across is likely to be flawed. That company had some real issues with quality control but there is no disputing the fact that their cards are classics.

Oddly my new scanner hated my copy and gave it what looks like a 'diamond cut' but in hand that's not the case. The fact that it's off center can't detract from the awesomeness of this thing. That's Soldier Field in the background, pre-renovation Soldier Field to be exact.

As for Sayers...he's right up there among the most exciting players I've ever seen.. His career lasted essentially five seasons but when he was on the field he was the center of everyone's attention. He came out of college with a nickname that would truly define his career, the Kansas Comet. And like a comet he was brilliant and flashed past us all too quickly.

The cardback has an obvious flaw, that burn-like mark but I'm just happy to have been able to find one in decent shape that didn't break my budget. While doing my searches I also came across a nice copy of the 1970 Sayers Topps Super. These are very affordable so I nabbed one as well.

Here is the back:

Topps slightly modified the back of their regular '70 Sayers card for the back of the Super. Here is the flagship Topps card's back.

And back to the 'side topic' at hand, social media. I went looking on YouTube for some Sayers highlights. The best one I could find was pretty impressive. But to my surprise (and consternation) it's set to some music that contains "N Bombs" which made me glad I wasn't doing the search while I was at work. So I found another one to include here. Well worth watching even with the less than superb quality ...and you can experience the Staples Singers to boot. Check out his run at about 1:50 against the Baltimore Colts. LOL at my team.

I mentioned how tough Philly Gum cards can be to find in good shape. Here's the perfect example. PSA graded this one as an 8 despite the ragged cuts you can see along the sides. Everything is relative.

EDIT, EDIT, EDIT!!!

Within a few hours of my posting this Jedi Jeff, author of 2x3 Heroes and a knowledgeable Chicago guy posted a comment to this entry asking me about the stadium background on the Sayers card. His contention is that the pic was likely not taken at Soldier Field as I stated but rather Kezar Stadium, them home of the SF 49ers.

Now I had spent some time prior to posting doing some googling and felt pretty sure the the shot was from Soldier Field but Jeff had me doubting myself. I love old stadiums and poking around the 'net to find the origin of shots used in the Topps baseball sets I've blogged was always a treat. And sometimes I was challenged by a reader and found myself to be way off base.

I decided to go down this rabbit hole and see where it took me. I based my statement on the scoreboard partially visible behind Sayers. To me it matched the old scoreboard at Soldier Field. The following are the best shots I could find.

I clipped the scoreboard from the racing pic and part of the card. It looked like this:

Looks pretty close. Note the 'legs' that hold up the scoreboard and the position of the flagpole.

Here is a picture of Kezar Stadium from the 1950s:

It's hard to see but the scoreboard doesn't look the same. But that's not exactly a deal breaker. Scoreboards come and go. But look closer at the pic above. Note where the ramps are in the area around the far end of the stadium. Here is a closer cropped look:

They are up near the very top of the stands. The ramps in Soldier Field were farther down, near the middle of the stands.

And it's certainly wouldn't hold up as evidence in court but this really neat piece of artwork sure looks like a match for the scoreboard in the card.

BTW...this Soldier Field rendering is one of many done by artist Gary Chanko. He is featured semi-regularly on the UniWatch blog and there is a Flickr site with all his scoreboard art. Very much worth the click!

And finally there is one more fact to deal with. Jeff pointed out that the Bears didn't use Soldier Field as a permanent home in until later. The Bears' site itself claims their home to have been Wrigley Field until 1970. But that's not entirely true. While Jeff's link to Wikipedia has them spending the 1965 season at Wrigley the 1964 season was played at Soldier Field.

So I'm going to stand by my original feeling that the 1966 Gale Sayers rookie uses a picture taken at Soldier Field. What say you jury of my peers?

Saturday, December 2, 2017

Along with about 753 other bloggers I recently received a jam-packed manila envelope from Fuji of The Chronicles Of Fuji fame. (Sidenote...hope you back feels better soon my friend)

He crammed the envelope with all sorts of Orioles goodies. Some of this, a little of that, a scattering of those, etc. Rather than scan and post every card I figured this was the perfect opportunity to test my new scanner. I could see if it clipped white borders like my printer/scanner did. And I could gauge scan quality across many types of cards. I changed setting between scans and some differences are pretty obvious. Here is a representation of the different types of cards Fuji included.

Like these two:

Brooks and Boog from the 1987 Hygrade All Time Greats set. Brooks scanned at 300 dpi, Boog at 600. Kind of a fun little oddball set. The green border first series of 50 cards was followed by and orange bordered followup a few years later. I can't recall seeing the orange borders before I google'd these.

Cal Ripken K-Mart card. These K-Mart cards always take me back to when we first moved into this area. It was much more rural than it is now and the only stores in the vicinity were a grocery, a Five and Dime (ask your folks, kids) and a K-Mart.

This Murray is from a 60 Years of Topps subset/promo set, etc. You probably know more than I do about it. Murray is always looking badass, right.

Here is a 90's Fleer Jeffery Hammonds and a 2016 Adam Jones that Topps wanted to look like a 90s release.

Ripken on a Fleer boxed set from the 1986. Back then I had a big box of boxed sets. Gone with the wind.

I'm not a huge fan of these Triple Play cards but ya know, this Wieters is pretty sharp!

Here is my first scanner 'fail'. Tim Bascom is surrounded by so much chrome that his signature sort of fades away. Much better looking in hand obviously. To be fair this scan is worlds better than what I got from my old Canon printer/scanner.

1994 Cal Stadium Club. The back has a cartoon of Cal and lists it #4 of 12 so without looking I'm guessing it's some sort of special subset or something. Cool card.

Here is one of the few cards I already had. I really liked this Heritage set of guys in throwback gear. I bought the Orioles out of it a few years ago. That O's cap and sleeveless jersey are fantastic on Mussina with the Memorial Stadium facade as backdrop. Dy-no-mite!

Another Cal commemorative card. It's from 2010 Topps History of the Game.

Fuji also sent some more current cards which is great because I never have much luck pulling any thru my rather limited pack buying.

That fact that I missed a lot of Brian Roberts Orioles career is kind of a shame. Note how the foil washes out. I'm working on successfully scanning these types of cards.

Allen and Ginters, Machado looking constipated.

Topps Attax Adan Jones. Does anyone every actually attempt to play stuff like this?

Nick Markakis. The fact that he plays for the Braves just doesn't sit well with me.

Wade Miley. At times last year he was the Orioles ace. Which goes a long way toward's understanding why we finished fifth.

There were more cards. Quite a few more actually but these are the ones I scanned. Thanks for your generosity Fuji. The blogosphere continues to be a wondrous place, both because of the generosity of the bloggers and the fun writing. You are a league leader in both categories.